Monday, 6 January 2014

Viking Raid

This weekend was quite interesting.

On Saturday, we discovered that one of the holes in our chain connected to a C3 that we had previously seiged and extorted. I'm pretty sure I write about it at the time, but the TL;DR is that we found some dudes living in a small undefended POS in a C3 wormhole. We seiged the tower and the hole and a disgruntled corp member ejected all their ships and gave us the POS password. I think he paid us too.

Since having their POS destroyed by us, this corp apparently moved into a new hole and upgraded their POS. However, there upgrade was only to a medium with only 2 hardeners, 6 guns and a neut. This hole was in our route to HS, so we had a scout placed in there while we ran some logistics.

The CEO of the corp was the only one online (most of us still had their pilots on watch list since the last siege) and was fucking about in a Pilgrim. We continued to watch what he was up to until we had finished hauling at which point one of our pilots (Apollo) decided to go and run the site in this hole with a Tengu and a Mobile Tractor Unit.

What a good choice that was.

About 10 minutes later, calls for help are heard over voice comms. The Tengu is tackled by a Dominix and is taking damage from both the Domi and the site rats. We scramble to help him and the Domi dies before most of us arrive. The Tengu lives, just, and warps away in 29% structure.

The Tengu repairs in one of the connecting LowSec holes and returns to finish the site.

Between the Tengu leaving and returning. Our new friend decides to bring his Hurricane to loot the Domi wreck. He lands on grid and realises the the Mobile Tractor Unit has tractored his wreck and scooped all the loot. Not to be outdone, the CEO reships into a Pilgrim and warps to the MTU and kills it. It's at this point that we uncloak and point him, killing his Pilgrim but not catching the Pod.

Knowing that he now has two wrecks on field, as well as the sleeper wrecks, he does what any sensible pilot would do. He brings in his Noctis and starts salvaging.

I'm still there in my bomber, so I de-cloak and kill that too.

I miss his pod again and he almost immediately comes back in a Stabber, because Stabbers are quite good against Stealth Bombers. Except when the SB is 50km away and the Stabber is pointed by a Tengu. He dies for the fourth time in less than an hour.

He finally reships to a Shuttle and heads out of the hole, presumably to buy some more ships.

He's gone quite a long time, and we start to leave but unfortunately get jumped by a T3 gang after we (possibly foolishly) engage a Rapier on the exit WH and loose a couple of bombers and an interceptor.

We are a little shocked about an hour or two later when we receive notification that we have been war-decced. By our new CEO friend. This causes great amusement to all as war decs don't really work too well against WH corps who mostly use neutral alts to haul their stuff anyway. Especially when the war dec comes from someone who is clearly not very good at PVP.

By now, we have a good number of pilots on, so the decision is made to go and kill his POS. Again.

We form up a solid number of DPS/Logi ships and head out. We are halfway through defanging his POS when he warps into his shields. We open negotiations. The offer is exactly the same as the last time we did this to him. Pay "xyz" now or "double xyz" after we reinforce your POS. After some very good diplomacy, Berolt receives the first payment (half xyz). the second half will come after we leave and take all of our scouts with us. We do this and sure enough, the second payment comes through and we go home. It took us eight minutes and each person in the fleet made about 150m, which was more than enough to pay for the ships we took with us, as well as a cut for the Corp wallet. Easiest 150m I've ever made. He also retracts the war dec.Kill mails: http://0nepercent.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=21264236

Here's an edited version of the "Diplomacy Logs":

[00:49:57] Berolt > Whats with this war dec?

[00:50:36] Hostile CEO > what's with attacking my wh again?

[00:50:48] Berolt > We had no intention, we just happened through.

[00:51:03] Berolt > Now though, we will.

[00:51:09] Berolt > Because you war decced.

[00:51:12] Hostile CEO > fine, i can do this all year

[00:51:29] Berolt > As usual, there is a way to stop it. "xyz"b before reo- "double xyz"b after reo.

[00:52:02] Hostile CEO > i have no way to know if you are trustworthy at all, have no guarantees that you won't be back in a month to fuck with me again.

[00:52:48] Berolt > You did not pay last time and we took down your tower, as we said we would.

[00:52:58] Berolt > You war decced, that caused us to come back.

[00:53:07] Hostile CEO > negative ghostrider

[00:53:09] Berolt > Now, once again, we will leave for "xyz"b now, "doublexyz"4b after reo.

[00:53:15] Berolt > Or, you lose it all again.

[00:53:45] Hostile CEO > i war decced because you iniitiated hostilities again, this time I made it official.

[00:53:49] Berolt > I did see we were fighting with you earlier, that did not prompt this current attack.

[00:54:21] Berolt > We will leave now, for "xyz"b isk.

[00:55:10] Hostile CEO > i will consider it if you give a guarantee against future aggression and remove ALL ships from this wormhole, incl scanning alts, etc

[00:55:46] Berolt > Hmm. That sounds fair.

[00:56:06] Berolt > We will not blue you, but we will overlook your pos for a period of time

[00:56:32] Berolt > Aka, we wont target your hole again.

[00:56:46] Hostile CEO > permanently?

[00:57:23] Berolt > You got it.

[00:57:23] Hostile CEO also, may I assume that Forsaken Asylum are allies of yours?

[00:57:37] Berolt > Hmm, no, we dont have allies.

[00:57:55] Berolt > You POS setup is real weak man, thats why other entities are likely targeting you as well.

[00:58:19] Hostile CEO > we lived in here nearly a year with that small you took down

[00:59:22] Hostile CEO > how do we seal the deal then?

[00:59:57] Berolt > "half xyz"b isk to me. We move out our main force. Send the second "xyz " billion and our last scanner leaves.

[01:00:16] Hostile CEO > and the text copy of this chat is our contract?

[01:00:54] Berolt > That will work. Believe me, theres plenty of people for us to hit.

[01:01:05] Berolt > So, we can put you onto our NO list

[01:01:09] Hostile CEO > Good enough.

[01:01:36] Hostile CEO > Isk sent

[01:02:31] Berolt > Departing

[01:02:33] Hostile CEO > I am pulling the wardec

[01:04:11] Berolt > We are leaving through the U210

[01:04:31] Hostile CEO > understood

[01:04:41] Berolt > Main force is out.

[01:05:23] Hostile CEO > I pay the final installment of "xyz"b now and your scanny alt(s) depart permanently, yes?

[01:05:37] Berolt > Yes

[01:06:19] Hostile CEO > isk sent

[01:06:31] Berolt > Thanks, good luck out there.

[01:07:06] Hostile CEO > you as well, as long as it involves some other poor sucker lol

_____

Prior to the above engagement, we tried to kill two ratting Mackinaws in a C6. Unfortunately, as we landed they warped off. I was a little slow and was the last on field when a Purifier de-cloaked and pointed my Manticore. I reciprocated and pointed him too, and started to lay into him with my torps. I started to melt much faster than I was expecting and my calls for some assistance went up a few octaves as I was very clearly going to lose this engagement.

After some heckling as to how I was dying to another bomber, assistance arrived just in time, as I exploded seconds later. It turns out, the Purifier was fit with light missiles, which made very quick work of my badly fit ship (it was left over from when I actually flew bombers in order to bomb things, and I'd just taken the bomb launcher off).